When I graduated from high school, my parents took me to Target and bought me things I'd need for college. As the cart filled with the bare essentials -- towels, shampoo, shower caddy, sheets, toothpaste -- I remember being shocked at how much it cost to live alone. It hadn't dawned on me before then that I couldn't just take everything out of my parent's house -- that I would, in fact, have to duplicate these essentials to live on my own.

What happens when there are no parents? Or when the parents can't provide?

A friend of mine recently forwarded me information about Give What You Got, an organization that helps Kansas City kids who are in foster care, residential treatment facilities, transitional/independent living programs and in at-risk households with supplies they need to transition into whatever world they are emptying out into. It's graduation time, and if you want to help, it's very easy.

I get a lot of review items, and I'm sending a bunch of cookbooks over to help a graduate out. Others are donating money to buy a microwave or pots and pans -- things to help ease the transition from childhood to adulthood.

Congratulations, graduates. Safe travels.

---

Read my review of The Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry at Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

She was wearing a white skirt. The bus seemed to take forever. So I handed her a badminton racket and a birdie. She frowned at me.

"What do I do with this?"

"Throw it up in the air and hit it."

She threw it wildly to the right, snapping at it with her right hand.

"You're left-handed. Put the racket in your left hand."

"Why?"

Why indeed.

"Always use your strong side in sports."

We practiced her throwing the birdie in the air until she could hit it. I told her not to worry about aiming right now, just hit the birdie. At first she held the racket and swiped laterally without connecting the flat part to the birdie at all. She is my daughter -- unpossessing of sports common sense.

"Just bounce it on your racket and get used to how that feels."

She smiled as it started to pop up and down without falling off.

"You're a natural, honey."

"Yeah, I'm a natural!"

Now, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I've never played badminton competitively in my entire life. I'm not good at ping pong, I don't know how to play tennis or golf. I never played basketball and don't know the rules to volleyball. I lasted two seasons in softball Little League playing right field when nobody could hit past third base.

There is nobody more unqualified than me to teach a kid any sport at all, whatsoever.

And I taught my little girl to hit the birdie yesterday.

Damn, I did it!

So there I was, standing in the courtyard of the Ritz Carlton at Mom 2.0, talking to Jenijen, Karen and Polly. "Hey!" I said. "I never remember to take pictures. Let's take a picture!"

I looked at the phone. "Damn! It's too close. I wish Bossy were here. Her arms are longer than mine."

And then, poof! The door opened.

 

Like magic, I tell you.

Cat yowling.

Pry eyes open.

Feed cat.

Stumble upstairs.

Brush teeth.

Notice suitcase on floor.

Realize leaving for Mom 2.0 in less than twelve hours.

Wonder where business cards are.

Wonder where chargers are.

Realize father has been reading from shared Kindle account on his Droid. Every time I turn on my Kindle, he's on a different page. Bizarre. Didn't know that happened. Maybe should warn him I'm going to hijack The Running Man this weekend with Super Sad True Love Story.

Where were business cards again? At Blissdom didn't bring enough business cards, bah.

Goddamn, so tired.

More coffee. Don't usually mainline coffee.

Stumble outside with bedhead to see little angel off on the bus. She demands I read a chapter book about pony-obsessed princesses while we wait.

Cry a little as the bus pulls away.

Hope nothing bad happens on flight.

Hope nothing bad happens to little angel and Beloved while I'm gone, as though my mere presence impacts possibility that bad things will happen.

Stumble back inside.

Business cards on the stairs. Hope I will remember to actually grab them.

Huzzah! New Orleans! See you tonight, baby!

I spend a lot of time saying "you can't have that" to my daughter. That she asks for everything is a function of being seven, of being a kid, of not quite understanding the boundaries yet, how money works, how time works, how practicing works. That she's starting to get it sometimes breaks my heart.

The other day she said she wanted a cookie, but she knew she couldn't have one until after dinner. As she stared longingly at the cookies made by her grandmother and trucked 500 miles across Iowa, I realized that I could probably leave them out and leave the house and she still wouldn't eat one, because she is starting to get it.

Yesterday she brought home a baseball card she'd made for herself at school.

I thought about what it means to want anything, to wish for a magic genie to grant your heart's desires. I remember wishing for that, hell, I still wish for that. It's not even about money, it's also about accomplishments or love or friendship.

It stuck in my head, and as I went to bed last night I thought there are junctures in life where you probably could have anything, but to get to what you want, you sacrifice other things. You sacrifice time for money, money for time, family for career, career for family, dreams for peace, peace for dreams, relationships for autonomy, autonomy for relationships. It's all a trade-off. But you probably could have anything if you single-mindedly went through life focusing only on that one thing. I have a quote that I often read that says something like "the reason more people fail instead of succeed is because they sacrifice what they want for what they want right now." And what I want right now is usually a nap or a big Kindle download.

I've started saying more often to her, "You can't have that right now." That toy she wants? She might get it for Christmas or with her allowance or piggy bank money. That cookie will be hers in a few hours. That perfect turn-out might come with years of practice. It all boils down to what makes sense right now, in this moment, and maybe the key to happiness is accepting that.

So perhaps it's not "you can't have that," but "you can't have that right now." Or "consider what you'd give up to have that and decide if that's what you really want."

I can teach her to eat healthy food before she eats a cookie, but I can't teach her what her heart desires most. Only she can answer that for herself.

I carried my niece on my shoulders, bouncing her up and down as we walked along the sidewalk in the fading light. The little angel and my other niece raced ahead, then back, and I saw something new in my daughter's eyes.

Jealousy.

She clung to my waist, asking to be lifted, all of her seven years. I shooed her away, clinging to the little waist above my head, making sure I wouldn't drop the two-year-old who squealed above me.

When we got back to the house, the little angel crawled under the deck and sulked.

I put down my two-year-old niece, keeping one eye on her as she raced about the yard, bouncing off grass blades and seeking, as two-year-olds are wont to do, anything dangerous that might exist in the world.

"What's the matter, Baby Duck?" I asked, as I peeked under the deck.

She buried her face in her knees.

And I knew. It kind of made me laugh, but not really. But sort of. Especially since it's not really my problem. I don't have any other kids. I knew it was all temporary. And my heart went out, a little, to those who have birthed more than one child.

I'm spoiled, you see. Sure, I have to play with her a lot more than my friends with more than one child have to don Zhu Zhu gear, but I really never have to deal with this.

At last Beloved appeared on the scene to chase our nieces and I crawled under the deck to assess the little angel's degree of sulk.

"You know you're still the Baby Duck," I said.

"I know," she said, to her knees.

"What are you doing? You don't even have to share me, ever! You should be happy to play with your cousins."

"I'm mad at you."

I sighed, picked a piece of grass from between the rocks.

"Okay," I said. "If that's the way you feel."

She looked up.

"But you could be my tickle monster assistant if you like."

And so it went, me the tickle monster, her my minion, chasing down nieces for tickling.

And then we came home, and it went back to the way it's always been, just the three of us rotating in our little solar system. We don't know how to be any other way, really. It's just us, it's always been just us. And I wonder how other families do it -- I see the pictures on Facebook, I hear about how lovely it is to have siblings love on each other, I see it with my nieces and nephews, and my heart sometimes wishes the little angel had a sibling to love on her.

But it's fleeting, because really I think we're sort of stuck in our ways. We like our family just the way it is.

---

New review of The Murderer's Daughters on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

"I've been listening to Dave Matthews Band lately," he said, apropos of nothing.

"Really? Were you drunk?"

"No, that's the weird part."

We mused, then, about the concert we went to with people I no longer know, the guy who lost his wallet when he rolled down the hill at Sandstone, attempted deals in the parking lot. The first time I saw Dave Matthews in concert was with my husband, though I spent a lot of time brooding to that music in my first-floor apartment 42 steps from the street on Barry in Chicago.

I just spent ten minutes trying to remember the name of that street, where so much of my personality was laid down.

Which blows my mind.

It's one street south of Briar. I only remember that because of the Briar Street Theater, where I saw Blue Man Group when it was three guys and some paint. They dropped toilet paper from the ceiling, and when I left, my head was buzzing like I'd had mushrooms and six shots of tequila, and I was totally sober.

While sitting here thinking about all this, I've been listening to Ani DiFranco, "Sorry I Am," on repeat. I leaned on Ani pretty hard during my twenties. We searched for love together.

I don't know why red fades before blue, it just does.

But now, it seems, even Ani isn't Ani anymore. She's got a baby and a partner, and it sounds like she's happy. I need to get her latest album. I haven't thought about music as a thing in a long time -- it's just something that flows through the background of my days. I don't need it like I once did.

I'm getting to the point where the events that once seared themselves into my mind are hazy.  I don't really remember specific things so much as what I was feeling when I was listening to that song, as though I could briefly inhabit the body of Rita at 17, at 21, at 25, a real-life time traveler. 

You are only coming through in waves. Your lips move, but I can't hear what you're saying.

Past events that used to hurt are scarred over now. I can push on them, nothing. 

And I can once again listen to the songs I used to love.

Today is the little angel's seventh birthday. As we waited for the school bus, she danced around the driveway singing, "It's my birthday! It's my birthday!"

There are so many things I could've said back, how much I love her, how her face makes my pupils dilate and my dopamine surge, how I physically miss her when she's gone, how proud of her I am, what a wonderful, sweet, funny, smart human being she is.

But instead I said, "Happy birthday!" She won't realize how much I love her until much later in life, and that's okay.

Last week, I got an envelope from my publisher. The first few times, I ripped them open excitedly, trying to figure out the numbers. Book-selling numbers are very difficult to make sense of, and I know this is not just me because every single author I've talked to has rolled his or her eyes when I asked how the hell to read a royalty statement.

"Just wait for the check," said one and went to get another drink at the bar.

"Start your next book," said another, and he laughed and laughed and laughed.

While I was working on my next book and waiting for that check, I attempted to predict out how likely it was I'd ever get one. Not everyone does. In fact, rumor has it that most authors don't earn out their advances. I don't know if this is true or not, but that's what the Internet told me.

The more I learned about returns and sell-ins and sell-throughs and discounting and backwards numbers, the less enthusiastically I ripped into those envelopes. I think there was one royalty period when I didn't even get an envelope.

Then ... this envelope. The numbers appear to have started over, and they're from December. And there was a check in there. A royalty check.

And so of course I started jumping up and down and screaming. My parents and sister were here for the weekend and everyone looked at me in confusion, trying to decide if I'd finally snapped or what. I tried to explain the backwards numbers and the confusion and frustration of trying to figure out what was going on with the book, and then I gave up and just kept jumping because that's okay, too. Beloved says all the time it's enough for the book just to have been published, but to me it wasn't enough. I wanted it to earn out.

I don't know if it earning out meant financial success for my publisher, and it certainly doesn't mean I can quit my day job. It was just really important to me. It means it was worth it to sit there at conference signings two years after the book came out, when people came up to me and said essentially, "You're still doing this?"

It gives me more energy to write the bio and marketing plan I was advised to write to go along with my novel query. Because this book business has such high highs and such low lows: I need all the help I can get.

It was a big help.